


The Diner

by theLiterator



Series: The Gift [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Prostitution, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Missing Scene, POV Outsider, POV Second Person, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-08 20:25:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15937652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theLiterator/pseuds/theLiterator
Summary: It wasn’t that long ago that you’d believed Batman would save you too.





	The Diner

**Author's Note:**

> This is for everyone who read The Gift and left a comment or sent a message about it.
> 
> I didn’t mean to write this, but it came out all at once on my iPhone while I was playing video games, and I liked how it felt. It’s You-POV from the point of view of a waitperson at the diner Tim and Jim eat at in the main fic.
> 
> I’ve always loved writing you-POV and reading outsider POV Batman fics, so I hope this fic works.

The kid comes in with the police commissioner every so often, and you fret to yourself about his bare feet and the hollows in his cheeks.

Sometimes he pays with cash and other times, more rarely, he slips up to the register without anyone really noticing him—too involved in their own lives or maybe he’s just a certain kind of invisible that the world has trained itself not to see—and pays with a black credit card that has a name on it you know from tv.

You don’t ask him about it, a little because you don’t ask any of the other grubby kids in off the street about their money, and a little because he’s eating with the police commissioner: he’s got to be safe, right?

(You don’t ask because a long time ago, no one ever asked after you when you paid your way with some rich asshole’s card.)

It’s Gotham and it hurts to care too much.

Still, you make sure the kid gets extra of everything on his plate, and Billy, your line cook, who has closed up the diner with you every weekend night since before you were even legal to work, calls him Tiny Tim, much to your and the dishwashers’ amusements.

He’s not like Tiny Tim from that old story in any way, because he’s real and he’s got to scrabble for himself.

There’s no more happy ending for the kid than there was for you.

You bring in cookies, sometimes, or brownies, or once a leftover slice your roommate’s gran’s pie, and pack them for him in a to go box.

He always looks startled when you drop it at his table, and you know it’s because he’s used to being invisible to the good people in the world.

Well, joke’s on the world because you were never any good either.

On nights when tips have been slow and rent is due, you keep an eye out for him in the shadows of the streetlamps where kids like him and kids like you used to be (still are) tend to linger, and maybe you see a dozen kids like him, maybe a hundred, but never do you see _him_.

You tell yourself the emotion that fills you up with every unfamiliar face that has hollowed cheeks and a hungry stare that isn’t his is relief.

Maybe it even is.

The police commissioner always tips you better than anyone else, those nights he pays, and the kid tips exactly 18%, like he’s got a cheat-sheet or a calculator in the pocket of his too-tight clothes.

You thank him with a smile.

You look for him in alleys and in gangs. In the backseats of Mercedes Benzes.

He’s got this camera, beat up and scuffed and loved and you remember notebooks and the backs of napkins and dreaming of being a poet.

A tourist family, jet-lagged and too foreign to know to fear the Gotham night, offers to snap a picture of the kid and the commissioner.

They can’t see his hollow hungry eyes or his dirty bare feet.

Sometimes he runs away, darting carefully through your customers. Sometimes the police commissioner is the one running, his phone against his ear, the kid hot on his heels asking “Is it him?”

It wasn’t that long ago that you’d believed Batman would save you too.

The time he runs into you, you freeze. You aren’t new enough at this to drop your tray, but the look on his face is almost enough to make you.

He’d stepped on your foot, just a little.

Just enough for you to notice that he was wearing shoes.

“What did you say?” 

You blurt out the question, forgetting for a second that the man the kid is running from is the police commissioner and you’re just a waiter at his favorite diner.

“I think he figured out that I know who he is,” the commissioner replies sadly, taking off his glasses and wiping the lenses with his shirt in a gesture that shows you he’s as human as the rest of Gotham.

For some reason it makes you like him even less.

“You know who he is and you never took him home?”

The commissioner gives you a sharp look, and says gruffly, “Home was what he was running from.”

It’s wrong, somehow, to think that the kid Billy’s been calling Tiny Tim had a family all along and somehow he was still running around Gotham at night barefoot and hungry and that other thing only those who linger in the shadows of streetlamps understand.

It’s wrong, but it’s Gotham.

“You want his to go?” you ask, because there’s nothing else to say.

He shakes his head and drops a $20 on the table.

“Keep the change,” is a muttered afterthought.

You would put it all behind you, but then, at the door, the muggy Gotham night slipping in, the commissioner pauses.

“He’s... he’s been adopted, now. He’s safe. He probably won’t be back.”

You smile, say something that sounds like you believe the lie he’s telling both of you.

You used to believe adoption got you out of the shadows at the edges of streetlamps, too.

***

You’re certain you’ll never see him again, and it’s a couple months before you’re proved wrong in the strangest way possible.

The police commissioner comes in, and behind him is a slouching teen in bright colors that you can’t even raise an eyebrow at, because this is Gotham and everyone on her streets has met him. He’s a myth made flesh, forever young, dark haired and laughing at the evils of the world that had stripped away everyone else’s laughter years since.

It’s not the first time the police commissioner has dragged Robin into your diner and stuffed him full of burgers and shakes and fries; it’s not even the tenth.

The parts of you that still believe in little things like Batman and justice pray every time you see him that it won’t be the last.

They sit down in the commissioner’s usual booth before you realize there’s a second boy with them, dressed all in black and curling into the side of the booth, quiet.

He’s a certain kind of invisible the world has trained itself not to see, just like you.

His hair is longer, curling at the ends and glossy with health, and his cheeks are full and his skin’s got a little more color to it. His fingers drum an impatient cadence against his camera, and you see that it’s new, missing the scuffs.

He’s wearing boots with a thick tread, black counterparts to Robin’s, laced tight to his ankles.

“What can I get you boys to eat?”

It’s automatic for you, but you don’t follow it up with a grin and a wink at the group of them.

The boy’s gaze is blank white from his domino, but there’s no mistaking the way he ducks his head from scrutiny or the shy smile that’s too afraid to bloom on his lips.

They order their usual orders, all three of them, and you can barely wait for the noise of the kitchen to block out the dining room before you grab Billy’s shoulder and shout: “It’s Tiny Tim!”

He doesn’t believe you, not even when he leans around the swinging door and looks for himself.

He doesn’t believe Batman can really save people either.

But when they’re ready to leave, the kid all in black darts up to your register, his movements a little less furtive, a little more graceful.

He pays with a card that has a false name, same last name as Robin’s, and when he’s writing out the tip, exactly 18%, Batman comes in.

The Gotham night is always close behind him, clinging to his cape like a shadow.

He drops a hand to the kid’s shoulder and the kid freezes that telltale second before he leans into it.

The eyes of his mask are blank and there’s no way to tell for sure, but you think when he looks at you and says his quiet, habitual thank you, that they’re no longer hungry.

“Batman.”

It’s not a thing you meant to say, or would have dared to say even an hour ago.

He doesn’t answer immediately, but as the boys (his boys) tumble out the door, he lingers, his mouth quirked up under the cowl in a way that softens him and dispels the lingering foul traces of Gotham.

“You bought him shoes,” you say finally.

It’s more than you’d done.

“And a new camera,” Batman agrees, and your heart is thrumming hard in your chest.

“Thank you,” you tell him, maybe for the kid, and maybe for yourself. For you, who still sometimes has to make ends meet in the shadows of streetlamps and the backseats of Mercedes Benzes.

“You made him cookies,” Batman replies. “And you let him sit, sometimes for hours, when he couldn’t go home.”

You suck in a breath, because that wasn’t anything, really: anyone’s welcome to stay as long as they can, on yours and Billy’s shift, once the dishwashers have gone home and the rot and fog of Gotham is licking at every window and seeping through the doors.

He drops a card on the counter, incongruously white with embossed letters that catch the light.

“Thank you,” he says.

Your throat is too tight and your eyes are hot.

“Did you—did you really adopt him?”

You ask it because you can’t go without knowing, you ask it because it hurts to ask just like it hurts to look and it hurts to believe.

He squeezes your hand, his gloves surprisingly soft and warm: you’d never figured they’d be leather.

His head tilts in a nod, and then he’s gone too, and the diner is silent around you.

Billy’s the one who picks up the card, when it’s been too long between orders and he’s worried.

He reads off the phone number, and hands it to you.

“Take your fifteen,” he advises, and you nod and make it out into the Gotham night before you break down.

The people on the line tell you there’s an entry level position you can have, that the company will sponsor your courses in the community college if you make it six months in the position.

You lean against the alley wall in the shadow of the streetlamps and let yourself dream about writing poetry before you head back inside to take another order, to wipe another table.


End file.
